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Restating the role of phenomenal experience in the formation and maintenance of the Capgras delusion

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Abstract

In recent times, explanations of the Capgras delusion have tended to emphasise the cognitive dysfunction that is believed to occur at the second stage of two-stage models. This is generally viewed as a response to the inadequacies of the one-stage account. Whilst accepting that some form of cognitive disruption is a necessary part of the aetiology of the Capgras delusion, I nevertheless argue that the emphasis placed on this second-stage is to the detriment of the important role played by the phenomenology underlying the disorder, both in terms of the formation and maintenance of the delusional belief. This paper therefore proposes an interactionist two-stage model in which the phenomenal experience of the Capgras patient is examined, emphasised, and its relation to top-down processing discussed.

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Notes

  1. There are reports of Capgras patients who claim to perceive differences in the impostor. However, when pressed on what exactly these differences are, they have difficulty pointing them out (see Young, 1999).

  2. In rejecting Ratcliffe’s examples, I am not ruling out altogether the possibility that there may be other everyday examples that are equivalent to the phenomenal experience of the Capgras patient. I thank the anonymous referee for drawing my attention to this point.

  3. For a detailed discussion on this difference, see Dretske (1995, 2000).

  4. I am grateful to Matthew Ratcliffe for this example.

  5. In Young (in press) I try to clarify further what I mean by recognising and yet not recognising someone, as well as the role familiarity plays in this distinction. In the discussion, I contrast recognition-familiarity with estrangement.

  6. See Breen, Caine and Coltheart (2000) for a more detailed discussion on this, and also Haxby, Hoffman and Gobbini (2000) and Haxby et al. (2001).

  7. When prosopagnosic patients are presented with a familiar rather than an unfamiliar face, despite their lack of conscious recognition, there is an increase in SCR. This difference is often interpreted as a measure of unconscious recognition and has been associated with one’s sense of familiarity (see Bauer, 1984, and Tranel & Damasio, 1985).

  8. Actually, Young (1999) noted that, when questioned more closely, Capgras patients report a general sense of oddness and unfamiliarity, and of things ‘not quite being right.’ This is what one might expect if the patient is less able to establish affective links with those around him, or even elicit emotional significance from certain places or objects. However, this general, and much milder, sense of ‘oddness’ does not lead to delusional belief.

  9. Although it could be argued that differences in the underlying neuropathology produce different experiences. Something in this difference leads one group to form delusional beliefs and another group not to.

  10. I appreciate that this statement is difficult to prove (to say the least), and problematic because of it. However, I hope that the argument presented throughout this paper provides some support at least for the possibility of the claim being true.

  11. See Davies and Coltheart (2000) for a more detailed example of this. Their EHBC account proposes a progression from experience to hypothesis to belief to circumscription.

  12. I am not trying to endorse the view that Capgras patients would be much more susceptible to all forms of visual illusion. Instead, I am simply trying to draw a parallel between our normal and active perceptual processing and that of the Capgras patient.

  13. Huq, Garety and Hemsley (1988) and Garety, Hemsley and Wessely (1991) noted that people with delusions tend to request less information before drawing a conclusion about the likely outcome of an event, preferring instead to jump to conclusions.

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  1. Institute of Psychological Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

    Garry Young

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Young, G. Restating the role of phenomenal experience in the formation and maintenance of the Capgras delusion. Phenom Cogn Sci 7, 177–189 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-007-9048-0

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