At some point during the last class I said, with reference to Frege’s notion of objectivity (i.e. shareability) of sense (Sinn) that it is a given that communication is possible, because there is a level at which inter-subjectivity works – a level at which we are similar enough, or similar in some relevant aspects. The problem is how to conceive of this level? I won’t say more here – since Diana and Alex will write a summary for the last class.
Let me just remind you (well, this holds for those of you who were there) that I also mentioned that this given – the fact that our minds are not (completely) opaque, that there are ‘windows’ between subjects, that meanings (i.e. concepts) can be shared – can be questioned when we go beyond the outskirts of the clinically normal mind. (Think also of an alien mind. What about an animal mind?) Could we understand a person that is deeply schizophrenic?
Here is a quote from Giovanni Stanghellini ‘Schizophrenia and the sixth sense’, p.132 (in Chung, Fulford and Graham edts. Reconceiving Schizophrenia, Oxford University Press 2007):
‘A second layer of displacement concerns the feeling I have that something is lacking while trying to communicate with a schizophrenic person. Phenomenologists think that schizophrenic persons show an enhanced aptitude to the bracketing of common-sense experiences and shared meanings [...] The same happens with the meanings we usually attach to words, so that we often lack a common ground for understanding each other. I may for instance have the impression that we use the same word but we attach different meanings to it. Thus, I have the sensation that he [the schizophrenic] does not share the same horizon of meanings that I take for granted to share with the other persons I usually get in touch with. ’
What do you think? Reflect also on what it might be to ‘attach a meaning to a word’? Is this something you do in your head? Does it depend on social, cultural or linguistic infrastructure (i.e. stuff outside your head)?
One more quote, from the same paper, p. 138:
‘If the taken-for-granted becomes explicit, ipso facto it becomes an object for reflection and doubting. This is the common premise for philosophy and insanity.’
March 10, 2008 at 10:30 pm
First of all, let me apologize for not being in class last time. I attended a workshop, a seminar held by Interact with the sponsorship of Nestle on “Consumer Marketing Today”. It was held in SNSPA and the presence was mandatory in order to get the diplomma and to understand and do everything.
I’m really really sorry for not attending the seminar about Frege, but I’m looking forward to reading the summary written by Diana and Alex.
Regarding the text, I think that what it says about schizophrenic people could be true, even though I don’t know any schizophrenic person. I’ve only seen the movie “A beautiful mind” about John Nash (a great matematician who “invented” and came with a breakthrough in game theory, for which he even received the Nobel Prize – for the Nash equilibrium – but only after his death). Well, John Nash was schizophrenic. I could perceive in the movie a slight different meaning attached to some words he used, especially when he talked to his wife. Neither he nor she could get to be understood by the other. The process of attributing the meaning was the cause, I think..
March 11, 2008 at 2:04 pm
It’s not so easy to say what’s happening in schizophrenia. The point of the quote was this: is it possible to communicate with someone that has a radically different experience of, and perspective on, the world and on her- or himself? We take this for granted with clinically normal individuals; but schizophrenia is the paradigm of in-sanity. A test case for the limits of understanding and empathy. A schizophrenic might use the same words we use, but, as you are saying, we might feel there is something alien at work – we fail to reconstruct what that person is trying to express. Nash, as most schizophrenics during psychotic crises, was delusional – he had strange, persistent false beliefs – and had hallucinations [disturbed perception]. In what sense can we relate to that? The movie tried to give us a picture of that broken mind, but to what extent that can be done is an open question.
Schizophrenia and high intelligence often go hand in hand. In the same individual, as in Nash, or in families – Russell and Einstein, for example, had close schizophrenic relatives.
Mental illness and high intellectual abilities are also – but rarely – connected in autism. Try the documentary ‘The boy with an incredible brain’ [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4913196365903075662]. Google ‘idiot savant’ and see what you get. I mention autism because this is another case where there seem to be no shared socio-cultural world – no shared meanings. At least in some domains autists seem to end up with a different conceptual repertoire.
More on schizophrenia:
> a great autobiography by Elyn Saks: http://www.amazon.com/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Through/dp/140130138X
> Chris Frith [http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/Frith/] and Rhiannon Corcoran [http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/neuroscience/contact/a-z/A-F/corcoran_rhiannon.phtml], two leading researchers of schizophrenia
The bottom line of all this is to think of what makes communication possible. A shared something. Well, what is it? Theories of communication assume it without saying much about it that is not just trivial. We can get some ideas by studying, as Frege and Wittgenstein did, the normal functioning of language. But we can also observe what goes wrong when communication fails – as in ‘madness’.
March 12, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Everything you said (in fact wrote) is very interesting. I’ll come back later after I have read the excerpts and seen the google movie, to discuss the matter a little. The most interesting part for me is the fact that “madness” is linked and connected with high intelligence. We could say that it’s a shame, but also that it kind of seems understandable, as geniouses sometimes have a price to pay for their extraordinary gift (wich is barely a gift for them, but for the world, the society they live in).