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Thought Insertion without Thought

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Abstract

There are a number of conflicting accounts of thought insertion, the delusion that the thoughts of another are inserted into one’s own mind. These accounts share the common assumption of realism: that the subject of thought insertion has a thought corresponding to the description of her thought insertion episode. I challenge the assumption by arguing for an anti-realist treatment of first-person reports of thought insertion. I then offer an alternative account, simulationism, according to which sufferers merely simulate having a thought inserted into their heads. By rejecting realism, the paper undermines a widespread explanatory framework that unites otherwise competing cognitive models of thought insertion.

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Notes

  1. See Graham and Stephens (2003) for an alternative agency account. Though Graham and Stephens agree with Campbell regarding the thought variable, they disagree regarding the process variable, instead explaining thought insertion in terms of a process of failing to make a thought cohere with one’s other intentional states (p. 102).

  2. There remains the leftover question about what accounts for the truth of (2) and (3). A common view is that (2) is not actually true, but true in the fiction (Woodward 2011). The account I provide of thought insertion is compatible with an analogous position, according to which sentences describing thought insertion episodes are not actually true, but true in the simulation (see Section 6).

  3. Retrieved on August 20, 2022 from https://forum.schizophrenia.com/t/people-with-auditory-hallucinations-question/53126/19

  4. This Section is consonant with two claims of the phenomenological approach. Central to the phenomenological approach is the idea that first-person reports of thought insertion should, in general, not be given a literal interpretation (Henriksen et al. 2019). In line with this claim, this Section implies that thought insertion reports that are apparently about the objective world, such as Joker’s report, should not be interpreted literally as being about the objective world, but instead as referring only to how things are experienced. The Section also aligns with another claim made by the phenomenological approach: that people with schizophrenia often engage in ‘double-bookkeeping’, whereby subjects are able to distinguish between the objective world and the world of their own delusion (Parnas et al. 2021). In arguing that reports of thought insertion refer to experience and not the objective world, I am suggesting that sufferers of thought insertion understand the difference between the objective and delusional world.

  5. There has been much empirical work supporting connections between simulation and delusion in general (see, e.g., Gerrans 2014).

  6. The view offered here bears similarities to Gregory Currie’s view of thought insertion (Currie 2000). On one reading of Currie’s view, in thought insertion a subject is in fact imagining another’s thought in an attempt at mindreading. But, according to Currie, since she loses agency with respect to the imagining, she experiences imagining another’s thought as actually having another’s thought. This version of Currie’s view is anti-realist, since it accounts for thought insertion without appeal to actual thoughts, but imagined thoughts. However, unlike the simulationist, Currie claims that imagining another’s thought plays an explanatory role with respect to thought insertion episodes: imagining another’s thought is the basis upon which one comes to treat the imagined thought as an actual thought. In contrast, according to simulationism, thought insertions episodes just are simulations of having an inserted thought, and so simulations do not play an explanatory role with respect to such episodes.

  7. I have focused on explanatory implications of adopting anti-realism. Anti-realism also has significant implications regarding the discussions of self-consciousness mentioned in Section 2. For example, if we adopt anti-realism, then the phenomenon of thought insertion has no bearing on the immunity thesis for the simple reason that thought insertion does not involve thoughts.

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to John Schwenkler, Zina Ward, and an audience at a meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, for discussion and feedback on this paper.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

    Shivam Patel

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Patel, S. Thought Insertion without Thought. Rev.Phil.Psych. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-023-00689-7

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