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Why the idea of framework propositions does not help

account for delusions

Tim ThorntonProfessor of Philosophy and Mental Health

Institute for Philosophy, Diversity and Mental Health, Uclan, UK

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Structure of talk

1. The general problem of understanding and delusions

2. Delusions as framework propositions3. A problem with the proposal

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Explanation and understanding

• According to Jaspers there are two kinds of intelligibility relevant to psychiatry:

• Explanation of causal connections through formulation of rules by experiment and collection of numerous examples.

• Understanding: static (= phenomenology) and genetic (the emergence of one state from another). “We sink ourselves into the psychic situation and understand genetically by empathy how one psychic event emerges from another.” [Jaspers 1997: 301]

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Jaspers on static understanding

• Subjective symptoms cannot be perceived by the sense-organs, but have to be grasped by transferring oneself, so to say, into the other individual’s psyche; that is, by empathy. They can only become an inner reality for the observer by his participating in the other person’s experiences, not by any intellectual effort. [Jaspers 1912/ 68: 1313]

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Jaspers on genetic understanding

• When the contents of thoughts emerge one from another in accordance with the rules of logic, we understand the connexions rationally. But if we understand the content of the thoughts as they have arisen out of the moods, wishes, and fears of the person who thought them, we understand the connexions psychologically or empathetically…

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Jaspers on genetic understanding

• Only the latter can be called ‘psychological understanding’. Rational understanding always only enables us to say that a certain rational complex, something which can be understood without any psychology whatever, was the content of a mind; empathic understanding, on the other hand, leads us into the psychic connexions themselves. Whereas the rational understanding is only an aid to psychology, empathic understanding is psychology itself.” [Jaspers 1913 / 74: 83]

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The limits of understanding

• According to Jaspers, understanding lies at the heart of psychiatry.

• But whilst all psychic events can – in principle – be explained, understanding runs up against limits. (Actually Jaspers implies all can be understood in [Jaspers 1913/74: 86])

• Some psychopathological phenomena lie outside the limits of understanding. They are un-understandable. For them, only causal explanation is available. [cf Jaspers 1997: 305-10].

• We can see some problems in the case of some much discussed ‘high quality’ delusions.

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Breakdowns of connections between contingent beliefs

• Consider the following expression of a delusion “I have a nuclear power station inside me”. Suppose this is combined with these utterances:

• “I am less than 2 metres tall” and • “Nuclear power stations have a smallest

dimension greater than 20 metres”. • Can we say that they believe that they have a

nuclear power station inside them?

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The problem

• The putative belief content - that they have a nuclear power station inside them - carries implications about relative sizes which are not accepted by the subject.

• Although they say ‘I have a nuclear power station inside me’ we cannot say that they believe that they have a nuclear power station inside them.

• They do not believe what we would have to believe in addition to believe that.

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Breakdowns exemplified in impossible beliefs

• Some psychopathological phenomena appear to involve impossible beliefs, for example, thought insertion or Cotard’s delusion.

• What sense can we attach to the sincere report that a subject is having someone else’s thoughts (cf Jaspers) or the first person report that the subject is dead?

• Both involve something more than a mere error but a severing of the conceptual connections which normally help constitute the apparent content.

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Breakdowns between beliefs and actions

• One feature of at least some delusions is a surprising weakness in their motivational force.

• For example, a subject whose laboratory work is interrupted by the apparent presence of fire breathing animals makes no attempt to alert security or the fire brigade or does not prevent her beloved niece venturing out into an ‘anthrax explosion’.

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The overall, modern, problem • On the one hand, ‘high quality’ delusions still

look like beliefs (avowable, some rational / meaning-based connections to other beliefs, some connections to actions).

• And, on the other hand, they cannot be fitted into our world view (too many broken connections).

• But, according to much late C20 philosophy, mentality is essentially public (Quine, Davidson, Wittgenstein, Heidegger?). The main criterion of belief-hood is fitting into our shared world-view. (Fusing of horizons.)

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How interpretative tools might address the problem

• Understanding / interpretation may still be possible (and hence the publicity of mentality accommodated) if …

• …within the larger context of a shared world-view some utterances can be re-interpreted as (merely):– Metaphorical– Empty speech acts (Berrios)– Expressions of a philosophical thesis (Sass)– Deviant framework propositions (Campbell)

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(The dilemma for Maher)

• If the basic model is that of an understandable response to an abnormal experience then given the bizarre quality of the delusions in question two adjustments can be made to try to capture that quality.

• Either the experience is bizarre and the response to it is understandable (as in the case of thought insertion). In which case, how can we understand the experience? This is, in effect, a problem of static understanding.

• Or the experience is at least continuous with normal experiences but the response to it is not (as in the case of the café tables and the end of the world). In which case, how can we understand the transition? This is, in effect, a problem of genetic understanding.

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2: Delusions as framework propositions

• The suggestion is that delusions share characteristics with the ‘framework’ or ‘hinge’ propositions described by Wittgenstein in On Certainty.

• Both delusions and framework propositions have the same fundamental epistemic status.

• They constrain and structure other empirical beliefs whilst being held immune from testing and thus certain themselves.

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Delusions as framework propositions

• The idea that delusions are deviant framework propositions looks to help us ‘solve simultaneously for understanding and utter strangeness’ [Eilan 2000: 97]

• It places them on the borderline of understanding whilst preserving their strange nature.

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Framework propositions in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty

• I have a telephone conversation with New York. My friend tells me that his young trees have buds of such and such a kind. I am now convinced that his tree is… Am I also convinced that the earth exists?

• The existence of the earth is rather part of the whole picture which forms the starting-point of belief for me.

• Does my telephone call strengthen my conviction that the earth exists?Much seems to be fixed, and it is removed from the traffic. It is so to speak shunted onto an unused siding. [Wittgenstein 1969 §208-210]

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Framework propositions in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty

• All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments: no, it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in which arguments have their life. [Wittgenstein 1969 §105]…

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Campbell on delusions as framework propositions

• In On Certainty, Wittgenstein talked about the epistemological status of propositions like ‘There are lots of objects in the world’, ‘The world has existed for quite a long time’, ‘There are some chairs and tables in this room’, ‘This is one hand and this is another’, and so on. Wittgenstein said that beliefs expressed by such propositions are not ordinary factual beliefs, but rather form the background needed by any inquiry into truth or falsity… [Campbell 2001: 96]

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Campbell on delusions as framework propositions

• In these terms, an obvious question to raise about delusions is whether the delusional beliefs do not have, for the subject, the epistemological status of Wittgenstein’s framework propositions. The kind of status that we ordinarily assign to propositions like “The world has existed for quite a long time” … is assigned by the deluded subject to propositions like “I am dead” or “My neighbour has been replaced by an imposter.” That is, they are treated as the background assumptions needed for there to be any testing… at all. [Campbell 2001: 96]

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Eilan on delusions as framework propositions

• Our framework beliefs are those fundamental beliefs we do not question, and which globally constrain our inferences and our interpretation of our experiences… The suggestion is that primary paranoid beliefs, such as that the IRA is out to get one, should be treated as constraining one’s reasoning and interpretation of one’s experience in an analogous manner. They are resistant to counter-evidence because of their fundamental framing role…

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Eilan on delusions as framework propositions

• (But contra the noise option, this does not render their expression senseless.)

• The main difference between this proposal and the ‘strange experience plus rational response’ proposal… is that it focuses on a structural feature which could indeed capture at least one sense in which one might want to say, with Jaspers, that the schizophrenic’s worlds are different. [Eilan 2000: 108-9]

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3: The problem with the proposal

• The proposal is supposed to extend understanding, rather than explanation, but it cannot because ascription of framework propositions presupposes agreement on them. Three points support this:– Framework propositions are identified from ‘within’ a

world-view.– There is a close relation between their fundamental

epistemic and their sense-giving roles.– There are no ‘external’ criteria for framework

propositions.

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i) Framework propositions are identified from ‘within’ 1/3

• I do not explicitly learn the propositions that stand fast for me. I can discover them subsequently like the axis around which a body rotates. This axis is not fixed in the sense that anything holds it fast, but the movement around it determines its immobility. [Wittgenstein 1969 §152]

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i) Framework propositions are identified from ‘within’ 2/3

• In one’s own case, framework propositions are identified through an articulation of what serves as a reason for what and what is not held up to question.

• This presupposes the possibility of understanding the ‘space of reasons’ from within. It is an internal perspective.

• In other cases, such propositions are shown (see below). But still available to a shared perspective.

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i) Framework propositions are identified from ‘within’ 3/3

• But I know that it would be nonsense to say “I know that the law of induction is true”. Imagine such a statement made in a court of law! It would be more correct to say “I believe in the law of …” where ‘believe’ has nothing to do with surmising.

• Am I not getting closer and closer to saying that in the end logic cannot be described? You must look at the practice of language, then you will see it. [Wittgenstein 1969 §500-501]

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ii) The relation of the fundamental and sense-giving roles. 1/3

• Framework propositions are akin to grammatical rules or the logic of language.

• Like grammatical rules / logic, they partially constitute the rules of inquiry.

• Whilst the negation of grammatical rules is nonsense, the negation of framework propositions approaches nonsense: it requires recontextualisation. The denial of a framework proposition in its normal context makes no sense ie we do not know what to do with it. It has no clear role.

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ii) The relation of the fundamental and sense-giving roles. 2/3

• ‘The question doesn’t arise at all.’ Its answer would characterise a method. But there is no sharp boundary between methodological propositions and propositions within a method.

• But wouldn’t one have to say then, that there is no sharp boundary between propositions of logic and empirical propositions? The lack of sharpness is that of the boundary between rule and empirical proposition. [Wittgenstein 1969 §318-9]

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ii) The relation of the fundamental and sense-giving roles. 3/3

• The proposal trades on the epistemic role of framework propositions. But that role goes hand in hand with a sense giving / logical role. And that undermines the prospect of using deviant framework propositions to increase understanding.

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iii) The lack of ‘external’ criteria for framework propositions 1/3

• The label ‘framework’ and ‘hinge propositions’ suggests a mechanical model of the structure of thought.

• If we could identify a structure of mental representations and determine - syntactically – their relations, we could perhaps identity framework propositions from the outside…

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iii) The lack of ‘external’ criteria for framework propositions 2/3

But:1. That presupposes the possibility of the

reduction of mental content. And,2. It goes against the repeated suggestions

that many framework propositions are not propositional attitudes at all.

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iii) The lack of ‘external’ criteria for framework propositions 3/3

• If the shopkeeper wanted to investigate each of his apples without any reason, for the sake of being certain about everything, why doesn’t he have to investigate his investigation? And can one talk of belief here (I mean belief as in ‘religious belief’, not surmise)? All psychological terms merely distract us from the thing that really matters. [Wittgenstein 1969 §318-9]

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Conclusion 1/2• Whilst there is something plausible about the

idea that delusions are form part of a breakdown of common sense, the further articulation of delusions as framework propositions fails.

• The ‘uber’ problem is that there are no external criteria for framework propositions. But deviant framework propositions resist assimilation into shared internal criteria.

• (There are no third person criteria for mental states, only shared first person plural criteria.)

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Conclusion 2/2

• Perhaps the problem is that a condition of adequacy of an interpretative approach is that it should depict the utter strangeness of at least some central psychopathological phenomena and that is an impossible task.

• Interpreting or understanding but still finding utter strangeness are incompatible goals.