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Re: and the key to my depression as well

Posted by alexandra_k on May 10, 2005, at 18:51:33

In reply to Re: and the key to my depression as well » sunny10, posted by alexandra_k on May 10, 2005, at 18:26:39

Lets take a delusional utterance: 'I am dead'.

Jaspers maintained that delusions are ununderstandable in the sense that they are self-defeating or contradictory in some way. I call this the 'Cartesian interpretation' of the Cotard delusion. According to Jaspers the following is a good analysis of what the subject is attempting to do in saying 'I am dead'.

'I am no longer a subject of experience'.
But Jaspers point is that if Descartes has shown us anything at all then he has surely shown us that it is IMPOSSIBLE or self-contradictory to attempt to believe that one doesn't have experiences! The very act of believing just is an experience (roughly).

So. We can't hope to make sense of a contradiction. If the delusional subject is attempting to express something along these lines then we cannot hope to explain the Cotard delusion except possibly some kind of neurological explanation 'by recourse to some underlying brain pathology'.

The second (most common) interpretation of the Cotard delusion I shall dub the 'Biological Interpretation'. According to the biological interpretation the subject intends to express their belief that they no longer are a biologically living organism.

Traditionally clinicians would attempt to draw the subjects attention to such facts as their being able to feel their heart beat. Their being able to walk around. Their having bodily urges such as the need to urinate. Such facts are biological signs of life. That the subject did not take such facts to be evidence against their delusion was itself supposed to be evidence for the delusional subjects irrationality.

The third interpretation was recently suggested by Sass. He maintains that the Cotard subject has the experience of a 'diminution in the normal tonality of life'. Basically they no longer have physiological / autonomic / affective responses. They feel emotionally numbed... Dead even.

If the delusional subject is attempting to express their EXPERIENCE of emotional death then THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT COULD COUNT AGAINST WHAT THEY ARE SAYING.

If they are expressing an experience then what they are saying is as certain as the cogito.

Whereas if they are making an inference from their experience of emotional death to something like their bodily death then it would seem that biological signs of life would be relevant to refuting their belief.

So...

Implications....

If the delusional subject (indeed, if the normal subject) knows anything for certain at all it is that they surely are having the experiences they seem to be having.

If that is what the delusional subject is attempting to do in making their utterance then clinicians miss the point in focusing on Biological signs of life.

Some one or other said that delusions seem to have 'reached the status of framework propositions for the delusional subject'. But if delusions are the expression of experience then it would be unsuprising that they have 'reached' framework status, because if they are expressions of experience then they are in actual fact framework propositions.


Hmm.

And so in some cases...

The delusional subject may make the inference like this:

P1) I have the experience of emotional death.
____________________________________________
C) I am emotionally dead (where to be emotionally dead just means to have the experience of emotional death.

But sometimes... They might be doing this:

P1) I have the experience of emotional death.
P2) Expereinces tend to be caused by reality being a certain way. (The experience of emotional death is caused by biological death)
____________________________________________
C) I am biologically dead.

But is this irrational?

We do this in our daily life...

P1) I seem to be sitting in front of a computer.
P2) Experiences tend to be caused by reality being a certain way
____________________________________________
C) There is a computer in front of me.

P2 in both cases is a framework proposition. It is not rational to believe it. But it is also not rational to disbelieve it. It is beyond the support or falsification of reason.

Delusions (even if they are about external reality) aren't any more irrational than our beliefs about the external world. They rely on the same framework proposition.

I think sometimes the subject is talking about their experience. Other times they might be making the inference to external reality - but this move isn't irrational. Clinicians can't provide evidence for or against P2) and so it is unsuprising that delusions seem immune to supposed 'evidence to the contrary'.

 

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