Rick Bellaar

This article explores the notion of first-person authority (FPA) in self-disorders (SD). It will be argued that the ‘ipseity disturbance model’ (IDM) of SD cannot account for the FPA of reports of disturbed mineness in SD. Moreover, it will be argued that the phenomenological account of a ‘loss of common sense’ - typically coupled with the IDM - cannot account for the FPA of reports of paradigmatic SD. An alternative ‘grammatical’ account of FPA drawn from Wittgenstein and Moran will be presented, which we will apply to reports of such SD, and extend to include associated pre-psychotic experiences. In light of our considerations, recent revisions of the IDM in terms of hyperreflexivity will be evaluated. It will be argued that a change of grammar of intentional concepts allows us to understand reports of the (hyperreflexive) phenomenology of SD as both first-personal as well as authoritative.

In this paper, we argue against two prominent ways of thinking about the ontology of delusions: delusionality as marked by mistaken reasoning, and delusionality as marked by empathic unintelligibility. Rather than offering a competing definition of delusions as such, we provide a Wittgensteinian analysis according to which delusions are voiced in the form of utterances that cannot be evidentially justified, and clash with hinges accordingly. Hinges are here considered grammatical rules that allow us to justify our knowledge claims. Delusional utterances conflict with these grammatical rules and are ungrammatical with respect to them. We will argue that the ungrammaticality of delusional utterances can account for both the intuitive appeal of a DSM-style definition in terms of false, unjustified and incorrigible beliefs, as well as its conceptual inadequacy. Similarly, this ungrammaticality accounts for both the intuitive appeal as well as the conceptual inadequacy of taking delusional utterances to be marked by the impossibility of others finding them empathically intelligible. It will be argued that traditional features such as lack of justification, imperviousness to counterarguments, and falsity are better considered to stem from, rather than to define, delusionality. It will be concluded that a further analysis of delusional utterances offers a way to positively define delusionality.