This is made in philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

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Philosophy bites is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy.

Philosophers of mind, though they occasionally discuss dreams and hallucinations,

tend to focus on the normally functioning mind.

They leave conditions such as schizophrenia to the psychologists.

But John Campbell believes that psychiatric disorders can be a source of insight,

not just for psychologists, but for philosophers too.

John Campbell welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Glad to be here.

The topic we're going to talk about today is Philosophy and schizophrenia. That sounds like a very strange topic for a

philosopher to be interested in schizophrenia. Why is this interesting for

philosophy? There are lots of reasons actually. I got interested because I was reading about the phenomenon of thought and assertion.

It was one of the classic first-rank symptoms of schizophrenia that patients have this sense that thoughts which are not

their own are being inserted into their minds. It's a very dramatic phenomenon. The feeling is that a thought that is of someone else's mind,

that particular thought has been inserted into yours.

So give me an example of the kind of thought a schizophrenic might have that he or she believed was inserted.

Some of these can be quite mundane thoughts.

A patient said, well, I look out of the window and

I look how cool and green the grass is, but it's actually someone else's thoughts working

in my mind.

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