BRAINS WITH MINDS: an interdisciplinary workshop
SCHIZOPHRENIA & SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
MAY 13-15, 2011 IN BERLIN
PAPERS FOR PREPERATION
PROGRAM
| Friday, May 13 | ||
| 6:00 PM | Cultural aspects of self construction: can a universal disorder such as psychosis be characterized by specific alterations of self experience? / How to Self-alienate Core-subjectivity | Andreas Heinz / Manfred Frank |
| 7:30 PM | Welcome Drinks | |
| Saturday, May 14 | ||
| Disturbances of Agency | ||
| 9:00 | General Discussion | |
| 9:20 | Delusions of agency in schizophrenia: the result of a specific way of optimal cue integration? | Matthis Synofzik |
| 9:40 | Discussion | |
| 10:00 | Wegner and colleague’s model of the sense of agency can’t explain delusions of control | Glenn Carruthers |
| 10:20 | Discussion | |
| 10:40 | Coffee Break  | |
| 11:10 | Alienation as a descriptive category | Jean-Michel Roy |
| 11:30 | Discussion | |
| 11:50 | Self-recognition impairment in patients with Schneiderian first-rank symptoms | Chlöé Farrer |
| 12:20 | Discussion | |
| 1:00 | Lunch Break | |
| Thought Insertion | ||
| 3:00 | General Discussion | |
| 3:20 | Inserted and intrusive thoughts – what do they tell us about self-consciousness? | Gottfried Vosgerau |
| 3:40 | Discussion | |
| 4:00 | Are 'inserted thoughts' thoughts? | Peter Langland-Hassan |
| 4:20 | Discussion | |
| 4:40 | Coffee Break  | |
| 5:10 | Loss of coherence and loss of self in psychotic verbal contents of mind: thought disorders and hallucinations as dysfunctions of the language system | Werner Strik |
| 5:30 | Discussion | |
| 5:50 | The neural correlates of thought insertion and inner speech | Martin Voss |
| 6:10 | Discussion | |
| Sunday, May 15 | ||
| Self-Disturbances in Schizophrenia | ||
| 9:00 | General Discussion | |
| 9:20 | The selves of schizophrenia | Shaun Gallagher |
| 9:40 | Discussion | |
| 10:00 | Bridging Sciences | Anna Strasser |
| 10:20 | Discussion | |
| 10:40 | Coffee Break | |
| 11:10 | Schizophrenia as a disorder of the self | Josef Parnas |
| 11:30 | Discussion | |
| 11:50 | The brain’s default network: Function and dysfunction | Felix Bermpohl |
| 12:20 | Discussion | |
General outline
The phenomenon of self-consciousness plays an important role in current debates in philosophy, neuroscience and psychiatry. It is the aim of our workshop to provide new impetus within these debates by focusing on disturbances of self-consciousness in schizophrenia. We believe that this will lead to new and fruitful interdisciplinary perspectives on our understanding of self-consciousness and schizophrenia. To facilitate this goal, we have planned a workshop with the following salient features:
1. To foster fruitful interdisciplinary discussions, we will implement an innovative new structure that enables an intense and professionally informed discussion, namely an initial “Call for Questions” prior to the workshop. Participants and speakers will be asked to contribute specific questions related to the topic or to the work of invited speakers. A selection of questions will be made available weeks before the workshop, and speakers will be encouraged to address these questions in their presentations.
We believe that this will introduce both structure and further focus to the sessions as well as enhance communication and debate between all participants.
2. The workshop will be opened up by a plenary lecture that will be open to the public. This lecture will set the stage for the sessions by situating schizophrenia within the broader themes of self-consciousness and of the different approaches to these issues.
3. We propose three sessions focusing on core topics at the interface of philosophy and psychiatry: (a) ‘Disturbances of Agency’; (b) ‘Thought Insertion’; and (c) ‘Self disturbance in Schizophrenia’ (see below for a more detailed description and a diagram of the structure of the sessions).
4. Each section will be opened by a general discussion guided by participants’ questions.
5. All participants will be asked to familiarize themselves with a core reading list for each session made available prior to the workshop.
6. The number of participants will be limited to 50. To encourage scientific juniors to participate we will offer up to 5 scholarships to help with travel and accommodation costs.
7. We plan to publish presented papers either in a journal or in an anthology.
SECTION 1: Disturbances of Agency
One widely held conception of the symptoms of schizophrenia is that they reflect defective action awareness, a defect exemplified both at the level of psychological mechanisms and in patient experiences. Thus, in psychiatric symptoms like 'delusions of control', patients seem less able to self-monitor their own intentional actions and may attribute their own actions to an external manipulation.
Defects in self-monitoring suggest defects in self-consciousness, but how can this be explained? Specifically, is the characterization of symptoms as defects in action awareness helpful and if so, how is it to be spelled out (cf. Frith's comparator model)? What conceptions of the term agency are necessary to understand these symptoms? Can a "defective agency assumption" be extended to explain other symptoms like auditory hallucinations or thought insertion? Are there plausible alternative models of first-rank symptoms?
SECTION 2: Thought Insertion
When we experience thoughts, there is no question that the thoughts are our own. Yet in the symptom of thought insertion, the authorship over thoughts paradoxically comes into question. In one sense, the patient has lost track of his own thoughts by mistaking his thoughts as somehow belonging to another person.
How is this possible? How should we characterize this defect in self-consciousness (e.g. can we draw an analogy to disturbances of agency for actions with respect to “ownership” or “authorship”)? How should we explain the symptom? Specifically, does it indicate a defect in normal processes (like defective self-monitoring processes) or an abnormal addition to such processes (such as delusions)? In this session, we aim to discuss the assumptions that inform explanations of this symptom as reflecting an abnormality of self-consciousness.
SECTION 3: Self-Disturbances in Schizophrenia
The notion of self-consciousness is deployed in many ways in philosophical debates. In this session, the emphasis will be to explore a basic notion of self-consciousness that appears disturbed in patients with schizophrenia. Many of the positive symptoms suggest a disorder in a basic form of self-consciousness, namely that seemingly implicated in keeping track of one’s thoughts and actions as one’s own.
Is there a basic and general notion of self-consciousness that both describes and explains these facets of schizophrenia? We will explore this notion within both Continental and Anglo-American traditions, including discussion of the minimal self (S. Gallagher), the concept of “Ich-Störungen”, as well as recent discussions about the prodomes (precursors) of schizophrenia. Explication of the disturbance of the self in schizophrenia will shed new light on both empirical and philosophical accounts of self-consciousness.
