When Self-Consciousness Breaks: Alien Voices and Inserted Thoughts (Philosophical Psychopathology Series)

In this book, G. Lynn Stephens and George Graham examine verbal hallucinations and thought insertion as examples of what they call "alienated self-consciousness." In such cases, a subject is directly or introspectively aware of an episode in her mental life but experiences it as alien, as somehow attributable to another person.Stephens and Graham explore two sorts of questions about verbal hallucinations and thought insertion. The first is their phenomenology―what the experience is like for the subject. The second concerns the implications of alien episodes for our general understanding of self-consciousness. Psychopathologists look at alien episodes for what they reveal about the underlying pathology of mental illness. As philosophers, the authors ask what they reveal about the underlying psychological structure and processes of human self-consciousness.The authors suggest that alien episodes are caused by a disturbed sense of agency, a condition in which the subject no longer has the sense of being the agent who thinks or carries out the thought. Distinguishing the sense of subjectivity from that of agency, they make the case that the sense of agency is a key element in self-consciousness.

When Self-Consciousness Breaks: Alien Voices and Inserted Thoughts (Philosophical Psychopathology)

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Stephens, G. Lynn

Graham, Department of Philosophy George

Psychology & Counseling

MIT Press]

In this book, G. Lynn Stephens and George Graham examine verbal hallucinations and thought insertion as examples of what they call "alienated self-consciousness." In such cases, a subject is directly or introspectively aware of an episode in her mental life but experiences it as alien, as somehow attributable to another person.
Stephens and Graham explore two sorts of questions about verbal hallucinations and thought insertion. The first is their phenomenology―what the experience is like for the subject. The second concerns the implications of alien episodes for our general understanding of self-consciousness. Psychopathologists look at alien episodes for what they reveal about the underlying pathology of mental illness. As philosophers, the authors ask what they reveal about the underlying psychological structure and processes of human self-consciousness.
The authors suggest that alien episodes are caused by a disturbed sense of agency, a condition in which the subject no longer has the sense of being the agent who thinks or carries out the thought. Distinguishing the sense of subjectivity from that of agency, they make the case that the sense of agency is a key element in self-consciousness.

Graham,George

Bradford Books

Too often our curiosity about the religious faith and practices of our neighbors in "the global village" is stifled by the arcane language and philosophical hair-splitting that greets us when we open a book in search of answers to our questions. With our frustration in mind, Professors Lynn Stephens and Gregory Pence offer this insightful and engaging introduction to six of the world's major religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Rather than lead us through the labyrinthian history preceding the modern-day incarnations of these six traditions, Professors Stephens and Pence invite us to view the world, if only for a few moments, as we might through the eyes of someone whose religious life is very different from our own. By drawing our attention to a problem or "dilemma" central to the beliefs and rituals of a given tradition, Stephens and Pence enable us to understand how the experiences common to all of us - birth and love, faith and community, suffering and death - can become, in the actual living of these experiences, uniquely Christian or uniquely Buddhist or uniquely Jewish. For example, we learn about Christian moral thought as we puzzle over the mystery of Jesus's dual nature. We come to understand the idea of a "chosen people" by uncovering the tensions between ethnicity and universalism in Judaism. And we stretch our minds to comprehend the essence of life as we ponder the Buddhist paradox of soulless reincarnation. To be sure, we take away from Seven Dilemmas a keener sense of how the world appears to someone steeped in the tradition of Islam or Hinduism or Confucianism. But more than this, we realize that many of the concerns so characteristic of our religious life - the relation between religion and secular culture, the nature of God, the hope for life after death - are common to believers whose lives of faith we might otherwise have thought wholly different from our own. The real treasure Stephens and Pence offer us is the knowledge that, beneath its motley exterior, humanity yearns toward whatever truth may yield answers to the questions burning with a similar fire in every human heart.

Seven Dilemmas in World Religions

Religion & Spirituality

Pence, Gregory

Religious Studies

Paragon_House

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