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Fractured Phenomenologies: Thought Insertion, Inner Speech, and the Puzzle of Extraneity
Author(s) -
LANGLANDHASSAN PETER
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0017.2008.00348.x
Subject(s) - preconscious , psychology , corollary , phenomenology (philosophy) , subconscious , cognitive psychology , cognition , efference copy , auditory hallucination , cognitive science , perception , consciousness , sensory system , epistemology , psychoanalysis , psychosis , neuroscience , philosophy , medicine , alternative medicine , mathematics , unconscious mind , pathology , psychiatry , pure mathematics
How it is that one’s own thoughts can seem to be someone else’s? After noting some common missteps of other approaches to this puzzle, I develop a novel cognitive solution, drawing on and critiquing theories that understand inserted thoughts and auditory verbal hallucinations in schizophrenia as stemming from mismatches between predicted and actual sensory feedback. Considerable attention is paid to forging links between the first‐person phenomenology of thought insertion and the posits (e.g. efference copy, corollary discharge) of current cognitive theories. I show how deficits in the subconscious mechanisms regulating inner speech may lead to a ‘fractured phenomenology’ responsible for schizophrenic patients’ reports of inserted thoughts and auditory verbal hallucinations. Supporting work on virtual environments is discussed, and lessons concerning the fixity of delusional belief are drawn.