Abstract
According to Sass and Parnas, schizophrenia is essentially a self-disorder which leads to the externalization or alienation of experience. This view is based on the phenomenological assumption that subjects suffering from schizophrenia manifest disturbances in the most basic presentation of the self, i.e. in the sense of being the experiential subject of experience. Interestingly, recent interpretations of the phenomenal character within the study of consciousness involve a similar claim. Just like Neo-Phenomenologists (including Sass and Parnas), proponents of such a view argue that, rather than overemphasizing the qualitative features of phenomenal properties, we need to turn to the most basic feature of experience, namely pre-reflective self-consciousness. In this paper, I will reflect on Sass and Parnas’s phenomenological account of schizophrenia and show how a particular model of conscious experience fits their claims. My aim is to give a road map to naturalizing phenomenal consciousness and present a way to ground the phenomenological view of schizophrenia.
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Notes
- 1.
Even though it is unclear what can count as naturalization, I take it to be the compatibility of phenomenal properties with physicalism here.
- 2.
This idea will become important at a later stage. It will help me to demonstrate possible ways to naturalize experience.
- 3.
In what follows, I will focus on the former interpretation, since it stems from the transparency principle and is clearly the stronger view. For detailed discussion on this issue see Gärtner (2017).
- 4.
It may be possible to describe differences through the notions of implicit, non-reflective or pre-reflective. I will, however, treat them as synonyms here.
- 5.
- 6.
This idea is controversial, even amongst phenomenologists. According to Clowes not all phenomenological approaches to consciousness agree with this idea (Clowes, 2018).
- 7.
What about the qualitative properties? In my opinion, Nagel is pretty clear. Certain phenomenal qualities or qualitative properties are also constituents of conscious experience. To be considered an experience does not only entail the fact that there is necessarily an experiencing subject; this subject also has to experience something the way it does. Therefore, experiences need to involve the idea that there is something it is like to experience, for the subject. If true, it seems only natural to assume that in standard cases the phenomenal entails both subjective properties and qualitative properties.
- 8.
The schema may be explained the following way: The experience E is constituted by the qualities of the object of experience O and (+) the phenomenal property Q. Whether or not Q depends on O is not the issue here. I only claim that this is the classic dichotomic account of experience.
- 9.
I am indebted to Franck Lihoreau, who helped me see this notion.
- 10.
For a specific evaluation of the problem of non-conceptual pre-reflective self-awareness, see Bermúdez (1998).
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the anonymous referees for their suggestions. It really helped to improve this paper. I would also like to thank the members of the Lisbon Mind & Reasoning Group (especially Rob, Inês and Dina) for their ideas.
Klaus Gärtner’s work is endorsed by the CFCUL post-doctoral research fellowship (UID/FIL/00678/2013).
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Gärtner, K. (2018). Conscious Experience and Experience Externalization. In: Hipólito, I., Gonçalves, J., Pereira, J. (eds) Schizophrenia and Common Sense. Studies in Brain and Mind, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73993-9_6
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