Higher-order thought and pathological self: the case of somatoparaphrenia
Analysis July 8, 2009 DOI: 10.1093/analys/anp094 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Citations | 27 |
| Key points | Argues that Rosenthal's higher-order thought theory, specifically the 'thin immunity' principle, fails to explain somatoparaphrenia, where conscious mental states can be represented as belonging to another. Proposes that this empirical challenge has broader implications for the theory's explanatory adequacy. |
Abstract
Somatoparaphrenia, a pathology of self, is philosophically perplexing. It poses a significant challenge for theories of consciousness, including David Rosenthal's higher-order thought (HOT) theory, which holds that HOTs are scientific posits in a theory that aims for explanatory adequacy. In a recent series of papers Rosenthal (e.g. 2005: 341) has employed the HOT theory as part of an attempt to explain ‘our sense of having a unified consciousness’, a ‘sense’ which he understands as the ‘compelling intuition’ that we have a single self. He develops his explanation in terms of an immunity-to-error principle (thin immunity), which holds that we are immune to error in certain restricted judgements concerning self. After presenting Rosenthal's theory in §2, in §3 we argue that it fails to explain somatoparaphrenia, a pathology in which mental states can be conscious even when they are represented as belonging to someone other than self. We discuss some possible responses in §4 and, finally, in §5, we point out a broader implication of this empirical challenge to the HOT theory.