The Measure of Madness: Philosophy of Mind, Cognitive Neuroscience, and Delusional Thought

299 Pages·2014·2.21 MB·English

by  Philip Gerrans

The Measure of Madness
Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology
Kim Sterelny and Robert A. Wilson, Series Editors
The Measure of Madness: Philosophy of Mind, Cognitive Neuroscience, and
Delusional Thought, Philip Gerrans, 2014
Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Sym-
bolic Variation in the History of Life, revised and updated edition, Eva
Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb, 2014
Cooperation and Its Evolution, volume 1: Agents and Environments, Kim
Sterelny, Richard Joyce, Brett Calcott, and Ben Fraser, editors, 2012
Cooperation and Its Evolution, volume 2: Agents and Mechanisms, Kim
Sterelny, Richard Joyce, Brett Calcott, and Ben Fraser, editors, 2012
Ingenious Genes: How Gene Regulation Networks Evolve to Control Develop-
ment, Roger Sansom, 2011
Yuck! The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust, Daniel Kelly, 2011
Laws, Mind, and Free Will, Steven Horst, 2011
Perplexities of Consciousness, Eric Schwitzgebel, 2011
Humanity’s End: Why We Should Reject Radical Enhancement, Nicholas
Agar, 2010
Color Ontology and Color Science, Jonathan Cohen and Mohan Matthen,
editors, 2010
The Extended Mind, Richard Menary, editor, 2010
The Native Mind and the Cultural Construction of Nature, Scott Atran and
Douglas Medin, 2008
Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic, Russell T. Hurlburt
and Eric Schwitzgebel, 2007
Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology, Robert C. Richardson,
2007
The Measure of Madness
Philosophy of Mind, Cognitive Neuroscience,
and Delusional Thought
Philip Gerrans
A Bradford Book
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2014 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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ISBN: 978-0-262-02755-7

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
1 The Measure of Madness 1
1.1 Integrative versus Autonomous Theoretical Explanation 1
1.2 The Basis of Theoretical Autonomy 4
1.3 Jaspers and the Inscrutability of Delusion 5
1.4 Meaning Rationalism and Framework Propositions 7
1.5 Neurobiological Eliminativism 13
1.6 Cognitive Phenomenology 20
2 Models, Mechanisms, and Cognitive Theories 21
2.1 Cognitive Autonomy: Models and Multiple Realizability 21
2.2 Causal Relevance and the Personal Level 23
2.3 Cognitive Neuropsychiatry and Neurocognitive Psychiatry 26
2.4 Autonomy Revisited 28
2.5 The Cognitive Economy 33
2.6 Theoretical Definition 35
3 The Processing Hierarchy and the Salience System 43
3.1 The Processing Hierarchy 43
3.2 A Computational Framework 46
3.3 The Salience System and Reward Prediction 52
vi Contents
3.4 Salience and the Adaptive Critic 57
3.5 Dopamine and Delusion 61
3.6 Applications 65
4 The Default Mode Network 67
4.1 Simulations as Narrative Elements 67
4.2 Mental Time Travel and the Default Network 69
4.3 Delusions as a “Mixed Mode” of the Default Network 72
4.4 The First-Person Perspective and Decontextualization 75
4.5 The Default Network and the “Essential Indexical” 78
4.6 Subjectivity, Affective Processing, and the Hub of the Default
Network 80
4.7 Default and Decontextualized Processes 83
4.8 A Mundane Example 86
5 Dreaming, Default Thinking, and Delusion 89
5.1 Dreaming and the Default Mode Network 90
5.2 The AIM Model 95
5.3 Feature Binding and the Fregoli Delusion 99
5.4 Context Binding in Dreams and Delusions 108
5.5 Dorsolateral Deactivation in Dreams and Delusions 109
5.6 Are Delusions Dreams? 110
6 The Second Factor: Default or Doxastic Incorporation 113
6.1 Doxastic Theories and the Second Factor 115
6.2 Performance Accounts: Endorsement, Explanation, and
Incorporation 117
6.3 Interactionism, Explanationism, and Attributional Style 122
6.4 Attributional Style and the Cotard Delusion 124
6.5 Bias and Default Thinking 128
6.6 Competence Accounts: Deficits of Belief Fixation 130
7 Imagination Incorporated 135
7.1 Incorporating Imagination 137
7.2 Belief and Imagination; Congruence and Incongruence 139
7.3 Joint Incorporation 143
Contents vii
7.4 The Metacognitive Account 145
7.5 Delusions and Default Processing 147
7.6 The Dual Nature of Default Thoughts 151
7.7 Imaginative Resistance and the Essential Indexical 154
7.8 Cognitive Therapy for Doxastic Theorists 156
7.9 Imagination and Psychological Structure 160
8 The Sense of Agency, Lost and Found: Experience and
Thought in Schizophrenic Delusion 163
8.1 The Sense of Agency, Lost and Found 168
8.2 The Priority of Visual Experience 170
8.3 Predictive Mechanisms and Cognitive Architecture 173
8.4 Experimental Evidence 176
8.5 Awareness of Predictions in Schizophrenia 183
8.6 Passivity and Externality 189
8.7 Mirror Neurons and Other Bodies 192
8.8 Passivity of Thought 197
8.9 External Attribution of Thoughts 201
8.10 External Attribution and Psychological Coherence 204
8.11 Passivity of Experience, Externality of Thought 206
9 Louis Sass and the Schizophrenic Lifeworld 209
9.1 Schreber’s Lifeworld 210
9.2 Cognitive Phenomenology 217
10 Conclusion 223
Notes 229
References 231
Index 265

Acknowledgments
A complete list of people who have helped me with the ideas
in this book would be extremely long. But I must make special
mention of the people and places without whom it could not
have been written. First, at the dawn of the millennium, Kim
Sterelny, Martin Davies, and Max Coltheart initiated a research
program of empirically informed philosophy of mind and cogni-
tive science in Australia. I am just one of the philosophers who
has benefited from their intellectual and personal support as that
program flourished. In the early 2000s, Kathleen Akins showed
generosity and foresight to fund a group of scholars through her
McDonnell Centenary Fellowship. All of those scholars have
gone on to do extremely interesting work at the border of philos-
ophy and neuroscience. I hope this book does justice to the goals
of that ambitious project. Kevin Mulligan and colleagues at the
Centre Interdisciplinaire des Sciences Affective at the University
of Geneva have provided a home away from home. I have also
been generously supported by the Australian Research Council
over the last decade.