Disturbed Consciousness

In Disturbed Consciousness, philosophers and other scholars examine various psychopathologies in light of specific philosophical theories of consciousness. The contributing authors -- some of them discussing or defending their own theoretical work -- consider not only how a theory of consciousness can account for a specific psychopathological condition but also how the characteristics of a psychopathology might challenge such a theory. Thus one essay defends the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness against the charge that it cannot account for somatoparaphrenia (a delusion in which one denies ownership of a limb). Another essay argues that various attempts to explain away such anomalies within subjective theories of consciousness fail. Other essays consider such topics as the application of a model of unified consciousness to cases of brain bisection and dissociative identity disorder; prefrontal and parietal underconnectivity in autism and other psychopathologies; self-deception and the self-mo

Rocco J. Gennaro is Professor and Department Chair of Philosophy at the University of Southern Indiana and the author of The Consciousness Paradox: Consciousness, Concepts, and Higher-Order Thoughts (MIT Press).