Sass and Parnas argue that:
1: That phenomenology can offer explanation as well as
description in virtue of the connections (of phenomenological implication)
between mental aspects.
2: That the connections charted in phenomenology cannot be
captured within analytic philosophy of mind.
I will examine 2. (On a suitably relaxed conception of
explanation, 1 seems fine.)
Sass and Parnas’ basic account
of schizophrenia
[T]he core abnormality in schizophrenia is a particular kind
of disturbance of consciousness and, especially, of the sense of self or ipseity
that is normally implicit in each act of awareness... Ipse-identity or ipseity refers
to a crucial sense of self-sameness, as existing as a subject of experience that
is at one with oneself at any given moment... This self or ipseity disturbance has
two main aspects or features that may at first sound mutually contradictory,
but are in fact complementary.
The first is hyper-reflexivity -which refers to a kind of exaggerated self-consciousness, that is, a tendency to direct focal, objectifying attention toward processes and phenomena that would normally be ‘inhabited’ or experienced as part of oneself.
The second is diminished self-affection -which refers to a decline in the (passively or automatically) experienced sense of existing as a living and unified subject of awareness.
These mutations of the act of awareness are typically, perhaps necessarily, accompanied by alteration in the objects or field of awareness – namely, by disruption of the focus or salience with which objects and meanings emerge from a background context... disturbed perceptual or conceptual ‘grip’ or ‘hold’ on the world. [68-9]
The first is hyper-reflexivity -which refers to a kind of exaggerated self-consciousness, that is, a tendency to direct focal, objectifying attention toward processes and phenomena that would normally be ‘inhabited’ or experienced as part of oneself.
The second is diminished self-affection -which refers to a decline in the (passively or automatically) experienced sense of existing as a living and unified subject of awareness.
These mutations of the act of awareness are typically, perhaps necessarily, accompanied by alteration in the objects or field of awareness – namely, by disruption of the focus or salience with which objects and meanings emerge from a background context... disturbed perceptual or conceptual ‘grip’ or ‘hold’ on the world. [68-9]
Why explanation in
addition to description?
The features of the basic account connect to other features: a
kind of holism.
Two sorts of relation: synchronic and diachronic.
Within the first or synchronic realm, we discuss three kinds of
relationship: equiprimordial, constitutive, and expressive - all of which involve
not causation but a kind of phenomenological implication. [63]
Overview of the views they
reject
They reject the restriction of relevant connections to i) rational
reason relations and ii) psychophysical laws. They also reject the constitutive
principle of rationality.
It should be evident from the above that discussion of mental
causation in recent analytic philosophy has focused largely on the question of the
rational coherence and potential explanatory significance of individual mental contents,
eg., the belief that there is an Italian restaurant on the corner; the desire that
one eat an Italian meal. Only phenomena that can be said to contain (or be describable
in terms of) this sort of ‘propositional content’ are capable of serving the kind
of rationalising or justificatory function that is required by the practical syllogism...
It is here that the distinctness of the phenomenological perspective becomes important.
[76]
This constitutive type of relationship does not, incidentally,
conform to either of the two types of explanation that are countenanced by many
recent Anglo-American philosophers: it is neither ‘a psychological link holding
between states of affairs or events’ nor ‘a relationship of making intelligible
holding between sentences’ ... - the latter being the only form of mental causation
accepted by many analytic philosophers...[79-80]
Many Anglo American philosophers have been persuaded by
Davidson’s claim that mental explanation, or the very possibility of the ascription
of mental states in the course of interpersonal understanding, simply requires
that one be able to assume that the essential rationality of the person being
understood or explained, and that, when such an assumption cannot be made...,
the only alternative is to resort to explanation of a physicalistic sort.
[75]
The argument for phenomenology as explanation as well as
description turns on the nature of phenomenological implication. Could the
various forms of phenomenological implication be understood within a broader
notion of Anglo-American philosophy?
Phenomenological
implication does not fir Anglo-American philosophy
Consider, for example, our concepts of diminished self affection,
hyper-reflexivity, and loss of cognitive perceptual ‘hold’: these are not reasons
nor are they causes, at least of a physicalist kind. [76]
In our view, the three facets..., and also the form and emblematic
content of experiential life, are linked together in relationships of necessary
implication rather than contingent correlation or causal interaction. The implications
in question are not, however, logical (like the practical syllogism) but, rather,
phenomenological in nature... [81]
Three sorts of synchronic
relation
The connection between hyper-reflexivity and diminished self
affection is equiprimordial. Why?
Indeed, it might be argued that these two disturbances are really
one and the same phenomenon, the very same distortion of the intentional arc that
we are merely describing in different words. Whereas the notion of hyper-reflexivity
emphasizes the way in which something normally tacit becomes focal and explicit,
the notion of disturbed ipseity emphasizes a complementary aspect of this process,
the fact that what once was tacit is no longer being inhabited as a medium of taken-for-granted
selfhood. Thus neither is more basic than the other; they are equiprimordial
aspects of a fundamental (noetic) disturbance of the act of awareness.
A clear theoretical grounding for this view is provided by the philosopher Michael Polany’s... account of the vector of conscious awareness as a continuum stretching between the object of awareness (what he calls the ‘distal’ pole), which is know in a focal or explicit way, and that which exists in the ‘tacit dimension’, ie. which is experienced in what Polanyi terms a more subsidiary, implicit or tacit manner. A tacit or subsidiary awareness of kinesthetic and proprioceptive sensations serves as the medium of prereflective selfhood, ipseity, or self-awareness (the ‘proximal’ pole of the vector of analysis) , which, in turn, is the medium through which all intentional activity is realized. [78]
A clear theoretical grounding for this view is provided by the philosopher Michael Polany’s... account of the vector of conscious awareness as a continuum stretching between the object of awareness (what he calls the ‘distal’ pole), which is know in a focal or explicit way, and that which exists in the ‘tacit dimension’, ie. which is experienced in what Polanyi terms a more subsidiary, implicit or tacit manner. A tacit or subsidiary awareness of kinesthetic and proprioceptive sensations serves as the medium of prereflective selfhood, ipseity, or self-awareness (the ‘proximal’ pole of the vector of analysis) , which, in turn, is the medium through which all intentional activity is realized. [78]
The connection between these and disturbed perceptual or
conceptual ‘grip’ or ‘hold’ on the world is constitutive.
In emphasising the foundational role of hyper-reflexivity and
diminished self-affection [a diminished sense of existing as a subject of awareness
or agent of action], we are not suggesting that they exist independently of or prior
to the noematic disturbance: they are not the cause but the condition of possibility
for the disturbance of cognitive-perceptual hold. [79]
(This constitutive type of relationship does not, incidentally,
conform to either of the two types of explanation that are countenanced by many
recent Anglo-American philosophers: it is neither ‘a psychological link holding
between states of affairs or events’ nor ‘a relationship of making intelligible
holding between sentences’ ... - the latter being the only form of mental causation
accepted by many analytic philosophers...[79-80])
These look like transcendental arguments.
If one’s attention turns from the distal world to the proximal ‘sensibles’
of one’s sensory fields it seems impossible that one also has the world in
focus.
The third kind of synchronic relation is expression.
Take, for example, a delusion about dissolving, being controlled
by an influencing machine, or being constantly recorded by video cameras. This sort
of delusion may be understandable, not because it plays a role in a logical syllogism,
but because it actually expresses or emblematizes, in relatively concrete form,
more general or formal features of the prevailing state... of ipseity disturbance.
[80]
Clearly expression need not fit any kind of psychophysical law.
But it is presupposed by ‘a relationship of making intelligible holding between
sentences’. That is, if we cannot assume relations of meaning, we cannot assume
this kind of relation.
Diachronic relations
Primary hyper-reflexivity:
Here we use the label ‘operative hyper-reflexivity’ to denote
a process afflicting the more fundamental levels of intentionality – a process in
which the normally transparent field of experience becomes increasingly disrupted
by unusual sensations, feelings, or thoughts that would normally remain in the background
of awareness but that now pop into awareness and come to acquire object-like quality...
A failure of self-affection necessarily disrupts the flow of affective and conative processes, largely because the condition of altered auto-affection and disturbed tacit-focal structure does not furnish a sensitive milieu in which affection by the object can elicit spontaneous response or channel the intentional flow into purposeful or willed activity. [82-3]
A failure of self-affection necessarily disrupts the flow of affective and conative processes, largely because the condition of altered auto-affection and disturbed tacit-focal structure does not furnish a sensitive milieu in which affection by the object can elicit spontaneous response or channel the intentional flow into purposeful or willed activity. [82-3]
Consequential hyper-reflexivity:
Primary ‘irritation’ and ipseity disturbance do, however, attract
further attention, thereby eliciting processes of scrutiny and self-exacerbating
alienation...Thus a more primary ipseity-disturbance seems to allow, perhaps to
inspire, and more reflective turning-inward and self-alienation of a mind that comes
to take itself as its own object.[83-4]
Compensatory hyper-reflexivity:
The primary disturbances of ipseity do not merely elicit fairly
automatic consequences; they also inspire defensive compensatory forms of hyper-reflexivity.
Patients may attempt, for example, to reassert control and re-establish a sense
of self by means of an introspective scrutinising... ‘I hold fast to my spot and
drown myself in it down to its very atoms’ [84]
The fourth is closely related to the basic account whilst the fifth
and sixth are – apparently – causal consequences of it. But these look like rationalising
explanations. Eg ‘attract further attention, thereby eliciting’ and ‘Patients may
attempt to reassert control by means of scrutinising’. They look like rational reason
explanations.
Intermediate conclusion
Having said that psychological links between events intelligible
relations between sentences do not exhaust the possibilities, Sass and Parnas
quote Taylor. What of Taylor's point?
[I]t is often just taken for granted that if a relationship
involves conferring intelligibility, it must hold between sentences or at least
representations of some sort... But the way in which my form of embodiment
makes, for example, ‘lying to hand’ or ‘too unwieldy’ intelligible descriptions
of some object is utterly different. The first term is not a representation or
made up of representations. It is a really existing agent in the world... ‘Knowing
our way about’ is not a capacity that can be analysed into a set of images on
one side and a reality portrayed on the other. [Taylor 1993: 326-7]
Embodiedness makes the world available. But we can reject ‘representationalist’
accounts of mindedness without rejecting the transcendental arguments which may
articulate the necessity of embodiment. For example, Strawson’s Kantian
argument that the ascription of mental predicates presupposes a bodily subject.
Phenomenal implication need not be incompatible with the
resources of Anglo-American philosophy. What’s more, the latter may help shed
light on different kinds of ‘implication’.
But a familiar worry
returns...
Polanyi plays up role of body in the form to structure. But could
think of the space of physical sensation and visual experience.
If one attends to the visual field / sensations, it seems one
cannot attend through them to the world beyond. (Not entirely clear what the
modal status of this is. Consider the example of the from...to structure
applied to words and meaning. But let’s assume that the locus of attention can
only be in one place (cf McDowell’s discussion of Sellars)).
The tension: the basic account draws plausibility from the
everyday cases of the from... to structure but this does not seem to capture a
fundamental disruption of subjectivity. Eg the Preston station example. So
cases which make focal normally tacit aspects of the visual field or bodily
sense do not seem to go far enough. There need be no disruption of
subjectivity.
What of a disruption of a more fundamental sense of self (‘Ipseity
or vital self-affection may verge on ineffability’ [2003: 230]) eg., the
transcendental unity of apperception? Suppose in some sense a breakdown of the
tacit connections to bodily identity threatens the ‘I think’ that can accompany
all my representations? The problem is that this swapping of the tacit and the
focal goes beyond what we can get a hold of. What kind of disruption of the
bodily would have this effect on the unity of thought?
