The Level-Theory of Self-Consciousness and its Implications for the Understanding of Psychiatric Disorders

The central philosophical problem of self-consciousness lies in the explanation of the immediate self-reference which is constitutive for self-conscious thoughts. In this paper, a level-theory of self-consciousness will be described. It proposes to solve this problem on a basal, non-conceptual level, where the immediate self-reference is established by very basal mechanisms of perception. This immediate self-reference is then transferred to higher, conceptual levels of self-consciousness. In addition, it will be shown that the systematic distinction between non-conceptual and conceptual levels of self-consciousness allows for new analyses of psychiatric disorders like autism and schizophrenia. For autism, the basic problem is identified as an impairment of the introspective experience of one's own mental states. This impairment leads to an enormous difficulty in learning a Theory of Mind (which is needed to attribute mental states to others) - it has to be learned much in the fashion of a scientific theory (which is too difficult for most patients). The two positive symptoms of schizophrenia, delusion of control and thought insertion, are analyzed as complex impairments that both involve an impaired "feeling" towards the own movements or thoughts, resp., which is to be located on the non-conceptual level. In addition, a further impairment on the conceptual level of judgments results in false and delusional attributions of agency and authorship to other people or alien forces.